Bad Hugh eBook

“After all, what does it matter?” he said.
“I only have to hurry and get in bed the sooner,”
and tossing one boot here and another there, he was
about to finish undressing when suddenly he remembered
the little Bible, and the passage read last night.
Would there be one for him to-night? He meant
to look and see, and all cold and shivery as he was,
Hugh lifted the lid of the trunk which held his treasure,
and taking it out, opened to the place where the silken
curl was lying. There was a great throb at his
heart when he saw that the last coil of the tress lay
just over the words, “Whosoever shall give to
drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold
water in the name of a disciple, verily, I say unto
you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.”

“It does seem as if this was meant to encourage
me,” Hugh said, reading the passage twice.
“I don’t much believe, though, I bought
old Sam in the name of a disciple, though I do think
his telling me he prayed had a little to do with it.
It’s rather pleasant to think there’s two
to pray for me now, Adah and Sam. I wonder if
it makes any difference with God that one prayer is
white and the other black? Golden Hair said it
didn’t when we talked about the negroes,”
and shutting the Bible, Hugh was about to put it up
when something whispered of his resolution to commence
reading it through.

“It’s too confounded cold. I’ll
freeze to death, I tell you,” he said, as if
arguing the point with some unseen presence. “Get
into bed and read it then, hey? It’s growing
late and my candle is most burned out. The first
chapter of Genesis is short, is it? Won’t
take one over three minutes? Stick like a chestnut
burr, don’t you,” and as if the matter
were decided, Hugh sprang into bed, shivering as if
about to take a cold plunge bath. How then was
he disappointed to find the sheets as nice and warm
as Aunt Chloe’s warming pan of red-hot coals
could make them.

And so he fell away to sleep, dreaming that Golden
Hair had come back, and that he held her in his arms,
just as he held the Bible he had unconsciously taken
from the pillow beneath his head.

CHAPTER XI

SAM AND ADAH

It was Saturday night again, and Adah, with heavy
eyes and throbbing head, sat bending over the dazzling
silk, which ’Lina had coaxed her to make.

’Lina could be very gracious when she chose,
and as she saw a way by which Adah might be useful
to her, she chose to be so now, and treated the unsuspecting
girl so kindly, that Adah promised to undertake the
task, which proved a harder one than she had anticipated.
Anxious to gratify ’Lina, and keep what she
was doing a secret from Hugh, who came to the cottage
often, she was obliged to work early and late, bending
over the dress by the dim candlelight until her head
seemed bursting with pain, and rings of fire danced
before her eyes. She never would have succeeded
but for Uncle Sam, who proved a most efficient member
of the household, fitting in every niche and corner,
until Aunt Eunice, with all her New England aversion
to negroes, wondered how she had ever lived without
him. Particularly did he attach himself to Willie,
relieving Adah from all care, and thus enabling her
to devote every spare moment to the party dress.